My Cats Are Not Picasso

Dear An Post,

please stop kicking the ever-loving SHIT out of my packages from zooplus. i understand that 14kg of cat food and 28kg of cat litter IS an unreasonable amount of crap to haul around, but you don’t realize the havoc that you wreak upon my life when you deliver my goods.

also, please stop arriving at a quarter to effing 8 in the morning. while i appreciate the thoughtfulness of your trying to drop by as early as possible to ensure that we don’t waste our day waiting for you, what you don’t realize is that i don’t normally go to sleep until around 3 am most days. given that i am, thankfully, still under the age of 60, i really need a few more than 4 and a half hours of sleep a night.

i’m beginning to think that perhaps you really like my unkempt crazy-cat-lady hair, swollen eyes and shockingly red bathrobe.

this morning, not only did my packages arrive looking like they’d been dropped out of an airplane, the litter bags contained within one of the boxes had split open. what ended up happening is that instead of simply dragging the boxes into the house and shutting the door stumbling upstairs to bed, i ended up attempting to dead-lift a box which had one side torn 3/4 of the way off. i then ended up dragging a 5 foot long trail of cat litter across my entryway, turning the floor into 40 grit sandpaper, which i then had to walk on.

i shuffled into the kitchen and got the dustpan thingy and swept up the largest pile, leaving a small amount between the two boxes to deal with later. i swept off the litter stuck to my cold, bare feet and shuffled upstairs to bed. i tried failingly to go back to sleep until about an hour later when i woke to became aware of some sounds of cat revelry downstairs (cat owners will know what i’m talking about). i again groggily stumbled downstairs in bare feet to find the following Rorschach test left to me by my cats:

it was very sweet of you to try to give my cats an outlet for expressing their innermost artistic desires, but perhaps you might have chosen a less abrasive medium to offer them. perhaps it’s time for me to order 15lbs of play-doh.

thanking science for roombas,
the crazy cat lady in #63

The Diet of Forbidden Everything

i just need to bitch for a moment about my struggles with trying to figure out what the hell to eat considering all my issues and all the conflicting information out there.

my body hates my thyroid, so i should clearly not eat the following foods (according to The Low Thyroid Diet web site):

• all brassicas – cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and 90% of what’s available in irish grocery stores aside from potatoes
• unfermented soy anything – i.e. tofu (so much for the #1 vegetarian easy protein option), edamame (oh how i love thee), bean curd, bean curd sheets, etc.
• spinach
• asparagus? really? dammit!
• most nuts – peanuts, almonds, pine nuts, cashews…
• most beans – especially garbanzos. bye bye hummus.
• corn? hmmm…
• excessive onions and garlic

that’s just the tip of the iceberg. and grains? carbs? sugar? – fuggeddaboutiiit. they’re an instant ticket to weight gain and apparently we’re supposed to avoid gluten cuz there’s some sort of link between gluten intolerance and autoimmune somethingorother which then causes your immune system to go haywire and attack your thyroid as well. ok, science, whatever you say.

so then i should eat a lowish carb diet and avoid gluteny foods, right? so i should clearly not eat the following foods:

• pasta
• rice
• bread
• barley
• ‘taters
• and all the other fancy grainy things they tell you to eat instead of wheat

and i should eat fibery carby things if i’m gonna have carbs. and i’m supposed to eat veg and proteins. BUT i’m supposed to avoid beans and most green leafy veg cuz they’re bad for my thyroid. and brassicas, 90% of what’s available. so like what the hell is left?

now to top it all off, i’ve got some inflammatory issues which fall into the my-fucking-back-is-a-nightmare category. SO, i should be avoiding foods that cause inflammation. primarily, this would be meats, dairy and nightshade family foods. this includes tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, eggplants / aubergines… you get the idea.

and it goes without saying that i shouldn’t have alcohol and caffeine either. coffee is expressly prohibited for 2 hours after taking my medication because get this – it binds to it and completely renders it ineffective. yay.

so.

carbs are bad.

beans are good, but can’t eat too many beans.

protein is good. but meat and dairy are pro-inflammatory.

veggies are awesome. nightshades, brassicas and random stuff like spinach are bad.

trying to drown my sorrows in alcohol is bad. coffee to try and wake up is bad. tea is bad. kill me now is bad.

—

after all that, the only things that haven’t been expressly forbidden leaves me with the following list:

• fish – oh but no, they contain mercury and it’s unethical and we’re running out and blah blah blah
• artichokes – i have a plant in my back yard!
• peas
• lemons – yes. YES!
• olive oil
• lettuce – the most heavily pesticided food item on the planet
• eggs
• sesame seeds
• yogurt – it’s the nice dairy 🙂

as much as i love all that, you have to admit it’s pretty limited. my nutritionist even gave up and said eat what you like. i think i should have pizza and beer for dinner.

Sessy Nes Pah ‘Omeopathy

say the title outloud and it might make more sense 🙂

i hate small talk. one of the main reasons is that i hate the “where are you from” question because the answer takes about 45 minutes and involves a lot of other questions which also annoy me to have to answer.

the second reason is that i hate the “what do you do” question. as some of you know, i’ve been studying Naturopathy and Herbal Medicine for the past… mmmm… 4 or so years. so my “what do you do?” conversations often go like this:

n00b: so what do you do?

me: i’m a recovering web designer

n00b: huh? oh, haha. so what are you doing now?

me: studying Naturopathy

n00b: Naturo-waa-huh??

me: Natur-o-pa-thy, you know, like natural medicine

n00b: OH, you mean like homeopathy!?

—

NO. NOT LIKE MUTHAFUCKIN HOMEOPATHY!!!

—

the remainder of the conversation goes one of several ways:

me: no. sigh. no, like herbal medicine

n00b: oh! my cousin / uncle / mom used to always give me [herb name here] when i was growing up for [condition name here]…

me: oh, that’s nice. yeah, it’s great for that.

OR

me: no. sigh. never mind. i’m studying herbal medicine.

n00b: oh! i heard [mispronounced herb name here] destroys your liver!

me: those scientific studies are usually falsified by the pharmaceutical industry or based on bad batches where the producer used poor farming or harvesting practices; much to the detriment of the consumer and the herbal medicine industry. and by the way, tylenol / panadol (acetaminophen / paracetamol) kills far more people every year.
…
at this point, they become very interested in some lint. across the room.

OR

me: no. like herbal medicine. you know, plants and shit.

n00b: oh yeah! so what would you recommend my mother / cousin / uncle use for her asthma / rash / gout / dandruff?

me: well, there are a million things… sigh… lemme email you
…
i usually never email them. not because i don’t love what i’m doing, but because they really don’t care that much about my answer and their mother / cousin / uncle will never get the message or if they do, they won’t listen to them anyway.

OR

me: no, homeopathy is something different and completely unrelated to what i’m learning. [lengthy description follows]

n00b: oh, that’s fascinating

me: excuse me, i need another drink now to get over having to enlighten your dumb ass for the past half hour.

—

so yeah, pretty much all of these scenarios make me want to stab someone. it’s very un-naturopath-like and not very PLURy. it makes me sad. and also angry. yes. so very angry.

and that, hopefully, makes you smile.

There Seems To Be Some Confusion

i’ve been noticing something over the years about lemon consumption. but first i must share with you that i am (due to some sort of genetic predisposion, thanks mom.) one of those people who eats lemons as if they were fruit. truly. with salt. oh yeah.

[incidentally, i am posting this on my mom’s birthday in her honor, even though she hasn’t found my blog yet.]

i find their sourness paired with salt to be pretty much the most perfect flavor combination. to put this in perspective, when i was around 2 years old, i ate an entire bottle of vitamin C tablets. the regular kind. not what normal humans would consider tasty, or chewable. i call this flavor “sour”. but it  has increasingly come to my attention that many people use the term “bitter” when they speak of lemons or their juice. now originally i had intended to scream at them with typing, but then i realized that i would be screaming at a few close friends and i thought maybe, just this once, on this, the day of my mother’s birthday (The Godfather, sort of, 1972), i would give them the benefit of the doubt. or perhaps just put out a poll to see what the 8 of you who read my blog think they taste like…

depending on how outraged i am with your responses (or lack therof), i will write another post with the results.